things
go well.

"I didn't kill him," MacLeod was saying, as he mounted the steps.

Rose shivered a little.

"No," she insisted. "But he died."

MacLeod was beguilingly entertaining at dinner that day, and in the
afternoon he and Peter went to drive. At supper, too, he was in his best
mood, and that evening Rose, worn out by the strain of his persistent
dominance, escaped to her own room. There she sat and counseled her
tense nerves. She was afraid. Then when she heard the closing of
grannie's door, she slipped downstairs to her tryst. The night was dark,
and there was a grumble of thunder from the west. In her excitement she
took swift steps, as if all her senses were more keenly awake than they
had been in the light, and kept the path unerringly. She had no doubt
that he was there, but he called to her before she could ask. His voice
vibrated to the excitement in her own heart.

"Good child, to come!"

She found her chair and sank into it.

"I had to come." At once she felt light-hearted. There seemed to be no
bounds to his protection of her. "I have told Electra."

"I knew you would."

"She has told Peter. They know it now,--all but grannie,--dear grannie."

"She can wait. She won't flicker. She won't vary. Nothing can shake
grannie's old heart."

"What did he say to you to-day?"

Osmond laughed. It was a low note of pleasure.

"Platitudes," he rejoined.

"And what did you say to him?"

"Platitudes again. He said his kind, I said mine. I learned a few
truths."

"About his business?--that's what it is. I can say it when I'm not in
the same room with him--business."

"About me. I learned what other fellows know when they are boys."

"Did he teach you?"

"He? No. Yes. Through my hatred of him."

"Ah, then you hated him! Was it because I taught you to?"

"Partly. Partly because he is an insolent animal. He is kind because he
is well-fed. Yet I think it was chiefly because he has ill-used you."

"Yes," she owned sadly. "I betrayed him to you."

But Osmond had escaped from recollection of the day into a mood half
meditative, half excited fancy.

"I have been thinking back, since he left me," he said, "ever so many
years. I see I haven't had any life at all."

"Ah!" It was a quick breath of something sweeter than pity. It could not
hurt.

"I have been turning away from things all my life, because they were not
for me. But now I think--what if I didn't turn away? What if I met them
face to